To the mumpreneur who feels like she’s failing

I saw you rocking your newborn baby back to sleep at 2am and worrying about everything from paying the bills to disappointing your clients. I saw you balancing the laptop in bed, typing with one hand and holding the baby with the other. Running a business from home can be a juggling act, and working in your pyjamas isn’t always a pleasure. Some days I wish I had an office to retreat to.

I saw you when you took your toddler to playgroup and forgot to bring spare nappies. I was the one clutching a coffee, my eyes barely open after a night spent bed hopping with my three girls, breastfeeding the two year old and just trying to get more than 20 minutes sleep at a time. I would have given you a spare nappy gladly. Especially if you wanted to swap for a snack, I forgot to pack snacks.

I saw you at the school gate when you didn’t know it was a non-uniform day and didn’t have time to go home for a change of clothes. I was so impressed by the way you calmed your son down, how you found a t-shirt in the lost property box and sent him in happy. But I also saw you cry in your car. I know how that feels, I’ve cried in my car too.

I saw the look in your eye when that client suggested the big project, the one that you would love to do but that would mean a two week business trip. The one that would bring in enough money to pay the bills for months, and break your heart every time you couldn’t kiss your babies goodnight.

I saw you when you had three packed lunches to make but only one slice of bread, I saw you trying to decide whether to rearrange that meeting (again) when your childminder cancelled at the last minute and I saw you choose between answering email, eating lunch and cleaning the loo at nap time, because you only had time for one.

I saw you, and if you look around you’ll see me too. There are more of us than you might think, trying to hold it all together. Trying to run a business and raise a family without letting either one down. It’s so hard, harder than anyone can ever know unless they’ve done it. People will tell you how lucky you are to have your own business, your own hours, flexibility. To be there for the school plays and the play dates. They are right, of course they are, but there is so much they don’t know. They don’t know how torn you feel, how you have to choose between spending time with your family and the business that provides for your family. They don’t see you working away at 5am so you can meet the deadline and still go to sports day, and they don’t know how you worry that your marriage might not survive as you work late into each evening.

We stretch ourselves so thin, us mumpreneurs. Trying to do everything for everyone and feeling like we fail at all of it. Then there are the days we manage to get it all done but only by sacrificing ourselves, our sleep, our health, our happiness. It’s easy to reach breaking point, like a single thread trying to lift a ton weight. On those days, the days you feel you might snap under the strain of it all, reach out. You’ll find us, a tribe of mumpreneurs standing beside you. We’ll hold the baby, lend you a wet wipe, make you a cup of tea (or wine, it might be wine) and help you word that tricky client email. We’ll listen to you vent, understand that you just need to get it off your chest. We’ll hold you up and keep you going. We’ll tell you that you are not failing.

When you run your own business you often don’t have colleagues. It feels great when you don’t have a boss breathing down your neck and nobody misses office politics too much but it can also be lonely. Nobody to chat to over a cup of coffee, to bounce ideas round with. No one who understands that difficult project or who can share a joke and a sandwich at lunchtime. There’s strength in relationships, in connection and knowing you aren’t alone, but as a mumpreneur you have to find that connection for yourself. Maybe you go to networking meetings and find us there, or maybe you’ll find us in online communities, or at the school gates. We are out there, if you just reach out we will get you through the tough days. Then next week you can do the same for me!

As a gift right now for you I would like to offer you two 30 minute sessions completely free, I want to help you get your business and your life to the next level so you can enjoy some free time more knowing your income is on the up and your business is in alignment.

I won’t make crazy promises that you’ll be in Hawaii sipping champagne half the year but you might be able to enjoy a nice glass of Prosecco in the garden, free from the stress and anxiety that comes with being lost in your business.

Hop on a FREE callwith me and I will promise to do one thing… LISTEN. As a copywriter (and motor mouth) I use a lot of words but I honestly want to just listen to yours. I want to know about your business and your vision, I want to know what excites you and gets you out of bed every morning and I want to know about the people you serve.

So let me pick your brain and then in a second follow up call you can pick mine as I present you with a strategy that you can use to build REAL relationships and grow your business as a result.